


rewind

by kittenscully



Series: fictober 2020 [18]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Banter, F/M, Fluff, Post-Episode: s06e04-05 Dreamland, Romance, Season/Series 06, Unresolved Romantic Tension, or: they don't get out of the car
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:14:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27086152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittenscully/pseuds/kittenscully
Summary: They could be anywhere, speeding through the night, wheels turning, going everywhere and getting nowhere. The exhilaration of possibility.[fictober day 18]
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Series: fictober 2020 [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1949467
Comments: 2
Kudos: 45





	rewind

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: "I told you so."

There’s a strangeness to the world, a pull in the stars. Some cosmic shift. 

With the windows rolled down, the dry air dances in Scully’s hair, and she feels, somehow, that weeks have passed since their departure for Rachel, Nevada. But there’s no tiredness in her bones, only freshness, as if waking up from a dream.

Beside her, Mulder is thoughtful. The interior light is on to dissuade the darkness, casting a faint glow over his twisted mouth.

The Extraterrestrial Highway isn’t marked by street lamps, only by distant glimmers in the sky. The kind you have to squint to see, if you can see them at all. 

“You okay?” She asks.

“Yeah, it’s just…” He shakes his head.

“Yeah.”

“I can’t put my finger on it.”

Propping her elbow up on the window, she drinks in the night. The spindly mile markers flip by, State Route 375 in countdown, a drive on rewind. They’ll end up back where they started, changed people, but to each other, the same. 

“It’s like I’ve forgotten something,” Scully muses. “And I can’t even recall whether it’s important enough to remember.”

He nods, taps his palm on the steering wheel. They peer out the dashboard together, eyes cast towards the sky, and she knows that if there’s something unexpected in the stars, he’ll be the one to see it. 

“For me, it’s more like a priority shift,” Mulder says. “I was so sure we’d find answers earlier, but now, I have the strangest feeling that there’s nothing here for us at all.”

“That’s a new thing for you, huh?” She comments, and he glances at her. “I could’ve told you that hours ago.” 

“I wouldn’t have listened a few hours ago.”

“Your self-awareness is truly remarkable, Mulder.”

“At least you could’ve said I told you so,” he points out.

“I’ve said that enough already.” 

He makes a face, and she surprises both of them by chuckling. It feels as if it’s been years since he made her laugh, but there’s a lightness in her chest these days, and it comes more and more easily. 

“I guess I just feel… different.” He shrugs, rolls his shoulders. “More awake.” 

She thinks of five years in the basement, at the bottom of the stairs like a morgue. Two bodies stuck in time, formaldehyde and futures that never were. Two ghosts, divergent in motivation but following the same patterns, mouths opened in a silent, shared scream. 

Resentment growing like rot, as unavoidable as the necessary end to the beating of their hearts. 

She thinks of their new desks, side by side in the bullpen, and of their common enemy. A formal assignment they don’t care for, and a secret one underneath, leading them on a treasure hunt across the country. A watchful father to hide from, like kids covering for each other.

Friends in commiseration. Partners in crime. 

“Me too,” she says. 

Mulder reaches across the console, paws for his little bag of sunflower seeds in the glove compartment. His arm brushes her legs, and the responding flutter in her stomach is exciting instead of fatal.

He flashes her a grin, and she is twenty-nine and alive again. 

“You feelin’ better now that we ‘got out of the damn car’?” He asks, wiggling his eyebrows. 

She snorts. The little speech of hers that he’s mocking feels like a distant memory, something said by another, less honest version of herself.

“You sure this is ‘a normal life’?” She deflects, earning a scoff in response. 

In front of them, the road carries on, straight and flat and endless. They could be anywhere, speeding through the night, wheels turning, going everywhere and getting nowhere. The exhilaration of possibility. 

Over the years, she’s made a habit of hypocrisy. 

Perpetually, she finds herself saying things she doesn’t mean, purely to give them a reality check. Sometimes, she even moves past the bounds of their little world, places herself in the shoes of someone looking in from the outside.

And so, she’d asked him: _Don’t you ever just want to stop?_ _Get out of the damn car, settle down, and live something approaching a normal life?_

She’d asked him, thinking about Bill and Tara and their picket fence, about Diana Fowley in her sultry, fertile femininity. About the time he’d told her he wanted to settle down in the country, and about how she’d never wanted that herself, not even in the brief throes of motherhood.

She’d asked him, oddly anxious that he might be halfway to stopping already, just when she’d finally started to feel the thrill of searching again. 

“You know,” she tells him. “I think I prefer it in the car, with you.”

After so many years of avoiding it, the honesty is refreshing. There’s no risk, not now that she’s sure Mulder feels the same way. And something tells her that he needs to know.

“Yeah?” He looks over at her, soft and hopeful. 

“Yeah,” she says, giving him a smile. 

The moment is so tender, so utterly vulnerable. Scully is certain that it couldn’t exist anywhere but here, at an indistinct location on the Extraterrestrial Highway, under cover of miles and miles of night. 

He breaks the eye contact, oddly shy, cracking a sunflower seed between his teeth. She keeps her gaze on him, tracing the familiar lines of his face over and over again, overcome with an odd feeling that she almost lost him without ever getting to tell him the truth. 

There’s always been a strangeness to her life, a pull towards the fringes. Some cosmic fate. 

Maybe, she thinks, the pull has always been towards him. 

“Maybe,” he says, as if echoing her thoughts. “Normal lives are overrated.”

There’s a glimmer in his eye, and a rising thrill in her stomach. Whatever she’s been searching for, she’ll find it with him.

Outside and upwards, the stars stay steady, the same as they’ve always been. Outside and underneath, expanses of blacktop vanish beneath the rental car, the same as they always have. State Route 375 on rewind.

It’s strange, she thinks, to be thirty-four and newly unconcerned with conventional ideas of wasted time. And yet, there’s nowhere she’d rather be than nowhere with him. 

They’ll end up back where they started, she and Mulder. Changed people, but together, the same as they’ve always been. 


End file.
